


Against Time Itself

by Anonymous



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29369076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After Rose falls mysteriously ill, the Doctor must devote himself to finding a cure before it's too late.
Relationships: The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler, Twelfth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	Against Time Itself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Melacka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melacka/gifts).



> In response to the following prompt: Rose is dangerously ill and it’s a race against time for the Doctor to cure her.

Heat radiates from Rose's skin in waves. 

The Doctor can feel it whenever he draws near her. It stretches far beyond fever -- far beyond the usual bounds of human experience -- and he does not know how to fix it. Despite all his time criss-crossing the universe, hopping from star to star, planet to planet, and conflict to conflict with seemingly boundless energy, he has never seen anything like this before. 

Perhaps another Time Lord might have been able to diagnose and identify the problem immediately -- one of his peers that performed well at the Academy and passed their exams with flying colors -- but he does not have access to them. 

Gallifrey is still out of place and out of time, and the Doctor has not yet managed to find it. 

There is always Missy, should things get truly desperate, but the Doctor is well aware that Missy is just as likely to kill Rose as she is to help her. It has, perhaps, better odds at success than doing nothing at all, but better is still a far cry from good, and the Doctor does not plan on doing nothing. 

He plans to act, and act quickly. 

He circles the console with near-manic energy -- eyebrows braced in a manner that leaves him looking even more like a concerned owl than usual, a feat which some people might have once considered impossible. His coattails flap as he moves, shifting to reveal the red lining beneath as if it's a badly kept secret. His hands and fingers are quick on the controls, and under his breath, he mutters a series of muddled reassurances and wandering theories. 

In his mind, there is only one way to figure out what might be ailing Rose. He needs to locate the source of the problem, retrace their steps until he stumbles across the point of infection or contamination. In theory, the process sounds incredibly simple, but in practice, it is unbelievably difficult. Since he did not register anything wrong while they were traipsing across those planets and trespassing on those stars, he does not think it particularly likely that the problem will be an obvious one. 

It's going to take some hunting. He's going to have to check shadowy corners that previously went unexamined, repeat every step, follow every point of contact. 

It's not an easy job. 

The Doctor's gaze lifts to the chair across the room where Rose sits -- shivering, sweating, and asleep. He is used to seeing her vibrant and full of life -- a woman who is willing to walk up to the most terrifying creatures in the universe, look them in the eye, and ask them with all possible sincerity if they have considered unionizing. 

Seeing her like this is devastating. 

It fills him with guilt and regret and rage. There is a storm building on the horizon, and he needs to save her before it has a chance to strike the shore and destroy the universe. 

He knows his vices well, the Doctor.

With a great huff of breath, he throws the lever to send the TARDIS into reverse. 

"Come on, old girl," he pleads, gazing around at the familiar blues and greys of the interior. "Don't let me down now. Rose Tyler is counting on us."

The first stop is a market on Arcanus Minor. It is a bustling place, full of people -- both human and alien alike -- brushing shoulders and striking bargains. A spiraling arm of a galaxy spans the entire sky, filled with stars so close and so bright that even night possesses the same bright cast of early twilight. The Doctor catches himself gazing up at those stars, almost as if he is casting up a silent prayer to whoever might be listening. It's a ridiculous gesture. He has never prayed to anything, but fear and worry have begun to eat away at him so thoroughly and enthusiastically that he feels both unmoored and unbalanced. 

With a shake of his head and a pursing of his lips, he reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulls out his sonic sunglasses. He set the TARDIS to land only moments after he and Rose initially departed from this place. If Rose had contact with anything dangerous, it should still be here. 

He concentrates intently on Rose's symptoms, thinking about bacteria and parasites and the thousands of nasty bugs that plague the many denizens of the universe. The glasses pinpoint hot spots, lighting them red and sharing their contents though a light telepathic bond. It's a serviceable tool, if not an ideal one.

The Doctor begins to walk, weaving his way through the stalls like a man on a mission. Occasionally along his way, he collides with a shopper or a merchant, and when they bark at him to chastise his rudeness, he merely waves an apologetic and dismissive hand in their direction. He does not have time to worry about courtesy right now. Rose may be dying, and that demands his entire attention. 

Every time he hits a glowing red spot, he scrutinizes it. The Doctor dismisses the ones that he recognizes, the ones that he would have caught in a basic diagnostic at the onset of Rose's symptoms. It is only when he has completed his busy, desperate sweep of the market and arrived back at the doors of his TARDIS that he realizes that he has dismissed each and every single alert. 

Whatever ails Rose, she did not contract it here. 

With a heavy sigh, he removes the glasses from his face, braces his head in his hands, and runs his fingers in pensive circles on his temples. 

He needs to think, needs to stop being a sentimental fool and focus on the issue at hand with a clear head, but all of his brains are on fire with love and concern and the fear that comes alongside them. 

It takes every ounce of his self-control to refrain from hurling the sunglasses into the crowd and crying out in anger, but he is trying to be better than that. Anger would be even less helpful than the fear that dogs him now. Anger turns him into a monster. Anger would cause him not to investigate planets, but to burn them. He would like to think that he had grown past those days of youthful folly, but he is painfully aware that it is impossible to shed his vices entirely. They are too deeply embedded in the core of his being.

As if responding to his fear, one of the TARDIS doors swings open behind him, reminding him that the journey doesn't end here and that there are still other places that may hold answers. 

He tucks his sunglasses into his shirt collar and disappears into the ship. 

The next stop is a rain-beaten cliff. It never stops raining on this planet. The ground is muddy and covered in bright blue moss that evolved specifically to cope with the weather. It squelchea beneath his feet, releasing a dusty green pollen into the moist air. 

The Doctor scans both the moss and the spores of pollen. Neither of them are helpful. Neither of them are unusual. For centuries, they have been carefully studied and catalogued by a series of interstellar botanists that hate him.

He doesn't blame them. 

He hates himself more every moment. 

Besides, their hatred doesn't get in the way of their work. It's very thorough.

The rain beats down upon the Doctor. His clothes cling to his body, and his coat seems to have gotten fifty pounds heavier. He feels not as though he is wearing a fine woolen coat, but as if he is carting around the very sheep from which the wool had been harvested. His hair clings to his forehead -- sodden and damp and cold. It makes him look sullen and disheveled, like a romantic poet who has lost his way. 

He tests the rain, the clouds, the dirt itself. 

Nothing shows up on his scans that isn't supposed to be there. 

He reaches the edge of the cliff and shoves his hands in his pockets, staring down at the roiling waters below. The roar of the storm is so loud that the sound of the waves is entirely drowned out. His toes flirt with the edge, sending a pebble tumbling through the air and into the sea below. 

He raises his face to the sky, wipes his hair out of his face, and releases the scream that has been perched in his chest since the first moment that Rose began to fall ill. 

It feels good to finally let it out. 

And despite the rain and the weight and the unanswered questions, he braces his shoulders against the wind and makes his way back to the TARDIS, determined to carry on. 

Between the next two stops, he tends to Rose. He has the TARDIS do more scans. He digs through dozens of hidden cabinets full of clutter and knick knacks to look for forgotten books and containers of medicine. The ship is full of thousands of years worth of detritus, left behind by the scores of people who have traveled with him. There are clothes from Zoe, weapons from Ace, unwashed and half-empty cocktail glasses from Jack. The ship contains millenia of memories, from countless people. It would be impossible to dig through it all, and that doesn't even account for the things that have yet to appear in his timeline. 

The TARDIS exists not only in this moment, but in all moments. She lives and breathes and spreads her roots and branches and thoughts throughout the entirety of time and space. 

It is both awe-inspiring and very, very annoying. 

The ship responds to his thought with a tilt, a shudder, and a groan from deep within the engines. 

When the Doctor finally accepts that the cause of his companion's illness is likely not on board the ship, he returns to Rose's side. 

She is barely awake. 

"Hey," she says, looking up at him through slightly unfocused, heavily lidded eyes. She is not doing any better, but she also does not seem to be doing any worse, which expels some of the tension that the Doctor has been carrying in his hearts and in his shoulders. 

"Hi," he says, more brusquely than he means to. Talking to Rose while she is like this hurts. Seeing her like this hurts. He tries to forget how terribly breakable humans can be, how short their lives are, how brightly they shine before their light is finally snuffed out. 

Not only does he not like endings, he doesn't like being reminded of the many, many goodbyes that have come before. 

This is not the moment in which he and Rose part ways. He is determined to make absolutely sure of that. He will use every weapon in his arsenal, throw everything he has at the problem, sacrifice his own life for hers if it comes down to it. 

Rose reaches towards him and takes his hand in hers. She smiles -- a weak smile, but still kind and gentle and good. Her palm is clammy against his, and he can feel the flagging beat of her heart just beneath the surface of the skin. 

One heart is not enough. 

It lacks the same degree of responsivity to unexpected problems that a binary system has. 

One heart is easy to break and hard to heal. 

He raises her hand to his lips and plants a small kiss on the inside of her wrist, right at the point where the vein runs up her arm. 

"You're worrying about me," Rose says. Blonde hair brushes against the top of her shoulders as she tilts her head. Normally, her hair is silken and gold and shining. Now, it's tangled and dull and knotted. 

"Course I'm worrying about you." The Doctor's voice leans harder than usual into the accent that this face carries -- the echo of Amy Pond's accent -- the way it always does when he gets over-emotional. It's like a flag, broadcasting his feelings to everyone in his immediate vicinity. It is part of the reason why he doesn't lie as often as he used to. Not only is he old and tired, but he is easily betrayed by his own body. 

Rose sinks deeper into her chair, drawing her blanketed knees closer to her chest. It's a knitted blanket, done in the many colors of the scarf that he wore centuries ago. The Doctor vaguely remembers that it was a gift, but he can't recall who gave it to him. 

That must mean that it is from somebody who is gone now. 

He always does his best to forget the dark days in his history.

And he desperately hopes that this will not be one of them. 

"I'll be fine," Rose says. The ghost of her previous smile still lingers at the corners of her mouth, but she lacks the energy to maintain it properly. "I'm always fine. Besides, I know my Doctor is the best Doctor in the universe." 

The Doctor averts his eyes, fixing them on the engines in the center of the console room, watching them move and shift and await his next instruction. 

"I have another place to check. If you need anything, ask the TARDIS. She'll probably find it for you." 

Rose's eyes flutter close, lashes sweeping across the very top of her cheekbones. "I bet she's miffed about you tearing the place apart."

Despite himself, the Doctor smiles, and squeezes Rose's hand gently, fondly. "Oh, she has loads of reasons to be angry with me. Don't limit her to just one." 

There is no reply. 

Once again, Rose has been dragged back into a fevered sleep. 

Moving with the slow delicacy of a person who does not wish to wake her, the Doctor lowers Rose's hand back into her lap and stands, crossing back to his place at the console. 

He takes one last look over his shoulder -- eyes lingering on Rose Tyler -- before he pulls the lever again. 

The sky is on fire. 

Smoke fills the air. It floods the Doctor's lungs. It burns his eyes. It collects on his clothes in a dusty film. 

He and Rose had fled this place the moment before the volcano was set to erupted. They always have possessed a propensity for escaping by the skin of their teeth, even in situations when they have more than enough warning to avoid death and danger. 

They like to joke that they either have unusually rotten luck or the best luck in the world. 

The two extremes can often be mistaken for each other given the right circumstances. 

Or the wrong ones.

In this case, the Doctor thinks that it's rotten luck, especially since he was forced to backtrack. 

In order to avoid creating a paradox, he had to arrive the moment after the explosion. A Time Lord can survive these conditions, but no human would have been able to take so much a step into this troubled space without immediately collapsing. 

Still, the toll it wreaks upon his body is enormous. 

It is difficult to think, difficult to move, difficult to breathe. 

Worse of all, it creates an enormous amount of noise. Not only must he scan the air that he and Rose had breathed when they ran through this valley hand in hand, he must sift through the expelled innards of the volcano in order to do so. 

It slows down his work, and since he is already pitted directly against a ticking clock, it ups his stress levels even more. Sweat gathers on his brow and trickles down the center of his back, sending a shiver throughout his entire body.

He feels his shoes start to melt, growing sticky beneath the soles of his feet, but still, he stands and walks and scans until he is convinced that he has examined the entire area in question. 

And once again, he finds nothing. 

When he returns to the TARDIS, he tiptoes through the console room, trying not to disturb Rose as she sleeps. 

He doesn't want her to see the state that he is in. 

He does not want her to know the steep prices that he is willing to pay, the torments that he is willing to put himself through in order to keep her safe. 

Thankfully, she does not wake, and the Doctor goes unobserved. 

Once he is in a set of clean clothes and has shaken the majority of the ash from his hair, the Doctor returns to the control room and tries again. 

And again. 

And again. 

In every place, he is met with the same frustration. Nowhere seems to have an answer. No organisms, however tiny, seem to match the biology of the illness that wreaks havoc upon Rose's body. 

It doesn't make sense. 

She had to catch it somewhere; this couldn't have just appeared from nowhere, but there is only so far back in their timeline he can jump before Rose runs out of time. 

He may have a time machine, but he doesn't have forever. 

The universe doesn't work that way. 

It's why he can't save everyone. 

He strides through the marbled corridors of Versailles, catching sight of himself from every angle in the hall of mirrors. Every eye in the room is on him, taking in the strange man that is not of them and was not invited, while he, in turn, focuses on nothing but the readouts from his sonic sunglasses. 

Before anyone has a chance to tap him on his shoulder and ask his name or his title or his purpose for being here, he disappears through the door and steps back into the TARDIS. 

The TARDIS almost feels like a haunted place. Rose may not be dead, but she is dying. Awareness of her condition permeates the air. It affects the sound of the engines, the wheezing of the breaks, the hue of the lights. 

Nothing is the same when Rose is not laughing with him, holding his hand tight, plunging them headfirst into some trouble or another. 

He walks through the red forests of Aatraxia Nine. Every trunk is alight with the buzzing energy that the roots of the trees pull from the soil, and the leaves hang above him like glimmering stars, bleeding off excess energy in the form of light and heat. 

Rose loved those trees. 

Together they had lain in the grass and stared up at the canopy, drawing constellations between the leaves and mythologizing their shapes through their own stories. 

Rose had told him the story of a walrus. 

The Doctor does not remember the details, but he remembers laughing. 

A sweep with the sonic tells him that this is not the place where Rose got sick. 

He steps back into the TARDIS and throws the ship to the next location. 

With each trip, the Doctor grows more and more desperate. 

There is a wildness in his eyes and a disheveledness to his hair. 

And every time he returns to the TARDIS, Rose seems to have grown weaker. 

The TARDIS reaches out to him, mind brushing against mind, sending a thousand half-formed concepts and images. She is difficult to understand. She is different from every other creatures in the universe. Only the Eternals defy time and convention in the same way as a TARDIS consciousness. Even in their arrogance, the Time Lords will never be their match. 

In this moment, the Doctor is painfully and acutely aware of those ancestral failings. 

But there is one ability that is unique to the Time Lords. 

There is one thing that might be able to save her, even if he cannot find and identify the problem itself. 

However, he also knows that it will hurt. 

The Doctor considers the best course of action for a long time. He shifts his weight from foot to foot and walks in circles around the console room, stepping over the many, many items that he hurled into the center of the floor during his frantic search for a cure. He nearly trips over a plush jellyfish that glows in the dark -- a prize from some interstellar carnival or another -- and catches himself on the railing. He grips it so tightly that tendons bulge and his knuckles go white. The tension reaches his jaw, too, and his throat bobs as he swallows.

There is no getting around it. 

He knows what he has to do. 

He is out of time. 

And, more importantly, Rose is out of time. 

The Doctor releases the railing with a sigh and begins the slow walk down the stairs. He skirts a pile of books and steps over a robot dressed as a boxer, a decommissioned waiter from a themed restaurant in 22nd century Chicago. 

He kneels down beside Rose's chair. The blanket has fallen to the floor. The heat pouring from her skin is almost scalding. Her breaths are shallow, scraping against the insides of her lungs and tearing the inside of her throat. Her lips are chapped and cracked. Beneath her closed lids, her eyes dart from side to side, chasing down fever dreams. 

With a deep breath, he lays his hands on her shoulders. 

From somewhere behind him, the TARDIS dings. 

"Oh, shut up," the Doctor says, chastising the ship with a spitting growl of a sentence. "You'll be fine. I'm only using a bit of it. No need to get your pretty little engines in a twist." 

The TARDIS always gets a bit tetchy when she senses regeneration energy. Something about crashing and self-repair and the Doctor's many, many complaints whenever she adopts a new interior. 

With luck, the energy won't explode this time. 

He's trying to direct it, manage it. He's not trying to burn every cell in her body. He doesn't know if a human would be able to support that kind of trauma. Transferring a full regeneration would be dangerous, but a little kick might very well be enough to chase the menace out of Rose's body. He has to believe that it will work, because if it doesn't, then he has no idea what else to do. He's on his very last hope. 

The good news is that she has been exposed to the Time Vortex for years. It alters a human's biology bit by bit and piece by piece, changing them in nearly imperceptible ways, drawing them slightly closer to what the Time Lords became. 

It is a comforting thought. 

With a deep breath, the Doctor releases the energy. It lingers in the dim air of the TARDIS -- bright and gold and glittering -- casting both of them in a warm hue. He can feel it slip away from him, slither through his grasp like a final, dying sigh. Regeneration feels like birth and death and fire, and he is very, very glad that Rose is so deep in fever that she is likely to be largely unaware of its workings on her body. 

The very TARDIS itself grows quiet, as if holding her breath and awaiting the outcome. The engines slow. The cantankerous interruptions cease. The air grows a smidge colder as she momentarily neglects the heating. 

The energy sinks into Rose's body slowly, taking its time, moving languidly as if it is a cat trying to decide if a person is worth its attention and affection. 

After a long moment of uncertainty, it is finally absorbed into her cells. 

Her body loses its sickly pallor, which is replaced instead by the warm glow of regeneration energy as it does its work, scenting out the illness and weeding out the affected cells. 

Still holding Rose with both hands, the Doctor closes his eyes and sends the final tenants of his hope into the universe on the wings of a desperate plea, not entirely unlike the one he made in the market while he stared up at an entire galaxy. 

Rose tenses. 

There is a full-bodied convulsion, the result of a fire burning somewhere deep inside her. The Doctor's hearts race as panic creeps up the back of his throat and sinks into the surface of his tongue -- so bitter as to be completely unpalatable. 

His fear hangs heavy in the air. 

The Doctor holds his breath. 

And then finally, there is a cough and a slow exhale. Golden energy whispers through Rose's parted lips and dissipates in the TARDIS air. 

Rose's eyes open. 

There is life in her gaze again. Though the exhaustion of both the illness and the price that regeneration energy demands are evident -- she feels like herself again. There is spirit and strength and will, and the Doctor cannot help but find himself smiling and crying at the same time, a closed-lipped, wet cheeked affair. 

"Welcome back." 

Rose does not reply with words. Instead, she reaches out to him, leaning forward as she takes his face in her hands, and plants an earnest and grateful kiss upon his lips. It takes the Doctor a moment of awkwardness and flailing hands and splayed fingers to process the moment, to remind himself that despite the fear and peril of the past hours and days, that Rose is still here. 

This is not a wild dream or a stress-induced delusion. 

She is real and breathing and alive and as fine as anyone in love with the Doctor can be. 

There is regeneration energy still alive in her body. It sings. It fizzles. It bubbles. It burns. It tastes of new life and old things discarded. It is a familiar sensation, but it has been a long time since the Doctor has felt it on anybody else. Even before the Time War and the damage it wrought, he was not in the habit of hanging around his own people when he could avoid it. 

But in this moment, Rose feels like his long-lost home. 

When they finally part long enough to draw breath, the Doctor finds his tongue long enough to fumble his way around a thought. "I thought I was going to lose you. Really, incredibly rude, insofar as Tuesdays go. Much more acceptable behavior on a Saturday. I feel heroic on Saturdays."

Rose lips hitch in a fond, slightly tilted smirk before she stops his chatter with yet another kiss, even deeper than the last. 

This time, there is no awkwardness. There is only love and longing and the particular brand of familiarity found only between people who know each other exceptionally well. It is a depth that reaches beyond just this face and just this body and into those that came before. They have a long history, the Rose and the Doctor, and the Doctor is glad to know that it does not end here, that they will keep carrying it into the future. 

There are entire stories to be written. 

Entire worlds to save. 

A universe to see. 

When Rose draws back, she is grinning -- all white teeth and pink gums and bright sunlight. "I'm not that easy to get rid of."

The Doctor takes both of her hands in his own and plants a kiss upon the backs of her fingers. 

"I would expect nothing less from you, Rose Tyler."

For a long time, the Doctor does not think about the illness. With Rose out of danger, there is no longer any need to continue the desperate search. The sunglasses are largely retired, brought out only when he wants to peer at a particularly interesting bit of inorganic or organic material. 

He does, however, program a small alert into the TARDIS, meant to ping him if she ever notices anything that possesses the same characteristics of the mystery that nearly stole Rose Tyler from the universe. 

When it finally alerts, he has forgotten about it. 

At first, he doesn't recognize the label. 

Rose is still at his side, but she is slightly older now. There are lines at the corners of her eyes that weren't there before -- small impressions that crinkle when she laughs, a map that speaks to the happiness and wisdom of a life that has so far been well-lived. 

The Doctor swipes through the information on the monitor, brow furrowing as he reads the spiraling, interlocked circles that run across the screen. 

"What is it? Call from an ex?" Rose asks. She comes to rest at his side, looping both her arms around him and resting her head against his shoulder. 

Though this body is not a hugger, the Doctor makes exceptions for Rose. 

He always makes exceptions for Rose. 

If she demanded the universe, he would lay it at her feet. 

He clears his throat as he wraps one of his brains around the message, rooting through memories until he stumbles upon the relevant information. 

"Do you remember when you were sick?" 

Rose stifles an amused laugh against the well-worn fabric of his hoodie. "Which time?" 

The Doctor's bushy grey eyebrows meet in an intense v in the center of his forehead. "The time I almost couldn't save you."

Rose's grip loosens slightly, and the laugh dies on her lips, suppressed by equal measures of concern and curiosity. "Yeah. What of it?" 

"I set a scanner on the TARDIS to alert if she ever found it again. She finally found a hit."

Fingers strike the keys of a misplaced typewriter as he pulls up a map, narrowing in on the set of coordinates from which the alert had originated. 

He raises a hand and taps the point on the map where a blinking dot marks the spot. Rose steps around him, peering at the map with narrowed eyes, a person finally come face to face with an enemy that she never thought that she'd be able to confront. 

"Where is it?" she asks, tone slightly hesitant, as if she isn't entirely sure whether or not she wants to know the answer. 

The Doctor shrugs. 

"I don't know." 

Wandering fingers walk around the console until they come to rest on the lever that will set the ship loose, send it careening through space and time until they appear at the point in question. 

Excitement brims in his eyes. 

"Want to find out?" 

The Doctor will not blame her if she says no, if she decides such demons are best left behind them, if she does not want to risk contracting the illness again, but he wants to give her a choice. 

This is Rose's mystery. 

Rose's battle. 

Whether or not they chase it is up to her. 

Rose considers the proposition for a long moment, lips parted in thought as her tongue works at the point of a single tooth. 

In the end, she takes a bouncing step forward and lays her hands on top of his. 

"What the hell, let's do it."

And she pulls the lever for them both, sending them off on another adventure. 


End file.
